Lesson 4: The B17 Bomber

Tic-Tac-Toe

It was a bright, cold day in October, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

According to my TV and contrary to all my first-hand experience, the United States have magically polarized themselves evenly into Red and Blue factions.  Red guy and Blue guy play Tic-Tac-Toe in the sand for a captive national audience.  Real-time graphs guide viewers through the perilous waters of independent thought.  Tic-Tac-Toe experts debate the artistic merit and style with which the "X"s and "O"s were drawn.  Software, created in part by me, ensures that the circus is profitable.  

And here I am, learning to fly airplanes.  

B17

Chris was finishing his lunch when I arrived.  He and Darrick were talking about a mysterious flat tire on one of the DA-20s.  The flat has happened 3 times now, each time with Chris on the same DA-20, with the same student, and all three times it was only noticeable during taxi.  Oddly nobody else has experienced it.  So Chris decided he was not going to fly it for a while and see if anybody else noticed it.  Why tempt fate?  

 

We got our stuff together.  As we walked outside, Chris asked me, "did you see the B17 when you came in?"   

"No," I told him.  I did not know what a B17 was.  He explained that B17s were old World War II era bomber aircrafts.  The U.S. Air Force (I presume) had flown a B17 into LZU and parked it on the ramp for public viewing.  For $6, you could tour the interior of the plane.  Chris, Darick and I walked down to it and gawked for a few minutes.  It's an enormous aircraft, designed to drop enormous bombs on bad guys, and equipped with machine guns to dissuade enemy aircraft from interfering.  I snapped some shots of course.  

(b17 pics)

Takeoff #2

Back at the DA-20, Chris guided me through the preflight as usual.  I could probably do the entire preflight by myself at this point.  I've seen more advanced students doing the preflight alone.  I'm probably not too far way from that point.

We taxied to the line.  Chris got "cleared for takeoff without delay" which means don't dilly dally; there's an inbound who will be needing to land in a couple of minutes.  

"Ok take us up to the line, " Chris said.  I gingerly pushed up some power and we started to barely move.  I'm still at the point where I like to take things extra slow and deliberate.

"Juliet 91 - No delay on your takeoff," the tower came over the radio.  That meant: hurry up.  So Chris took control for us to get lined up for take off.  

"Full throttle," Chris said.  I pushed up to full throttle and we started moving.  For some reason we were yawing right really hard.  It felt like I was having to stand on the left rudder to keep us from veering off the ramp to the right.  

"At 55 knots pull up," Chris said.  At around 55 knots the ground contact vibration died down.  I pulled up and we were in the air.  Tower told us to turn west.  We turned and climbed to about 4,000 feet.  Today we were to practice trim control, banks, and more slow flying.

Steep Banks

At one point, our traffic proximity alarm went off.  We look around but could not find the nearby aircraft, which is not good.  Then Chris found him, above us on the right side.  It was a glider.  We were coming up on some clouds, so Chris banked us hard to the left.  

I've never banked this hard before.  It had to have been at least 45 degrees, maybe more.  I'm glad we did though, because I had been timid about banking too hard before.  Part of getting comfortable as a pilot means learning what "a lot" and "a little" feel like.  As a land animal born to fear heights and imbalance, it's like learning to ride a bike all over again.  I practiced steep banks into headings.

Slow Flight

Mastering slow flying is a pre-requisite to learning how to land.  In other words, landing is essentially a controlled stall as close to the runway as possible.  You fly slower and slower, closer and closer to the ground until you stall and the plane drops in a controlled descent onto the runway.  In a few weeks, we will start touch and goes.  

As we landed today, I kept my hands on the stick to feel the landing.  The controls become "mushy" at slow speeds because less wind is flowing over the control surfaces.  I need more slow flight practice, but I'm starting to be able to see the landing in mind.